Some might call it intolerable cruelty.
George Clooney recently revealed he is fond of sending letters that appear to be written by other people – just as he pranked fellow actor Tom Cruise.
“I've sent letters from Bill Clinton to every actor I know,” the 63-year-old actor said. “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Tuesday. “I try to find their worst movie and say to them, 'So I was on a plane and (watched your movie).'”
“The Brad Pitt one was pretty brutal. I sent it to Don Cheadle,” Clooney continued. “I sent it to Tom Cruise, and said he wanted to do (“Interview With the Vampire 2”), but this time Brad wanted to play Lestat. And I sent it to Meryl Streep with a box of CDs for the dialect and I said, 'This guy helped me with my accent in “Troy” And I think this can really help you.'”
“Brad said this afternoon that Tom called him and said, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, you can play Lestat, that’s fine, I don’t have a problem with that,’ and he was like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Kimmel, 56, responded.
Cruise, 62, and Pitt, 60, played two vampires living in the 18th and 19th centuries in the 1994 classic “Interview with the Vampire.” The film also starred Kirsten Dunst and Christian Slater.
“I will say this — once you've done something really sordid, long-lasting, it's like having a nuclear weapon,” Clooney told Kimmel. “Everybody's so scared that you — you know this — somebody named Richard Kind wanted to do “Punk'd” or one of those stupid shows, and they wanted to punk me and they called all my friends and they were like 'No! He could put a corpse in my apartment.'”
The “Wolves” star revealed if his famous friends immediately know the letters are from him.
“With me it's usually a bit of a guess. They usually figure it out one way or another,” he said.
But this isn't the only prank Clooney has had on his castmates in recent years.
The Oscar winner told the talk show host that he intentionally worked with his and Pitt's “Wolf” director Jon Watts before the filmmaker pitched the action comedy to Pitt.
“I actually forced him to go over the pitch with me, I forced him to work on it. 'Tell me how you're going to say it, don't do it,'” Clooney said. “I actually completely intimidated him (she called Brad).”
“Wolves” will be released in select theaters on Sept. 20 and stream on Apple TV+ starting Sept. 27.
